Affluent newcomers eager to integrate despite hostility

By Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle
Graffiti was scratched into their foyer’s glass window and paint splashed on the facade.
Someone scrawled “Evict the yuppies” on the sidewalk outside. Then came a 3 a.m. wake-up call through their building’s intercom.
“Why the f— do you live here?” asked the voice on the other end.
The fight over San Francisco’s vast income disparities had detonated at Alistair and Lizzy Crane’s front door, just weeks after they moved to the Mission from their native England.
For once, Alistair couldn’t summon a droll retort. The threat was as close as their front door.
“Keeping people out of your community doesn’t work; it doesn’t engender positive growth,” he said. “You have to embrace change rather than fighting it.”
Lizzy, typically more cerebral, could say only, “It’s really disappointing.”
On the surface, the newlyweds, both 28, epitomize the kind of wealthy tech folks whom agitators love to hate.
Alistair sold his startup for $100 million, last year’s biggest British tech deal. After jetting to the World Cup in Brazil with a client, he took unabashed pride in seeing everyone – starting with the bellhop — use the FIFA app his company wrote. They own a Porsche, a Ferrari and a BMW. They’re unfazed by the $5,100 monthly rent in a former industrial space converted to sleek lofts that sell for north of a million each; it’s cheap compared with London, they say. He constantly gets kicked to the back of the queue at Philz Coffee for being glued to his mobile devices.
But the Cranes don’t fit the pat narrative of arrogant arrivistes.
Alistair left school at 16 to sell classified ads and still exudes a born salesman’s boundless enthusiasm. At 23, he partnered with a friend to start a company creating mobile apps for big corporations and turned down $10 million in venture funding because he valued independence. That meant he and his partner reaped a lion’s share when the company was sold.
Alistair is relentless, too. He and Lizzy were friends in high school; when they reconnected as adults, he pursued her for months.
Lizzy, who recently earned her doctorate in neuroscience, is academic and private compared with her husband. They married weeks before moving to America and joke that their time in the Mission is their honeymoon.
Alistair speaks about job creation with the passion of a politician on the stump. He sees it as a mission, both through his day job running a division of the company that bought his startup, and as a civic project.
He plans to set up a free computer lab and classes when his company moves to San Francisco’s Financial District early next year, similar to an initiative he launched in London. He has lined up volunteer tutors from his company and talks with zest about the chances to help local youth.
“I wasn’t a golden child,” he said. “Some people help keep the streets clean; I would like to be the person who helps young people learn new skills.” He also signed up to do one-on-one mentoring through the Big Brother/Big Sister organization. Lizzy plans to volunteer assisting children with learning disabilities.
Though they didn't know much about the neighborhood before they moved in, they appreciate its vitality and culture. “We like being somewhere with a bit of a buzz,” Lizzy said.
“It’s so multicultural around here that really everyone fits in here or no one fits in,” Alistair said. “Everyone’s from a slightly different walk of life; it’s not any one class in society or any one geographic background.”
In Alistair's retelling, it's the vandals who stick out in the neighborhood.
“So many people told us that (the harassment) wasn’t in keeping with the feeling of the Mission,” Alistair said.
The couple have already met scores of neighbors and shopkeepers while walking their puppy, Winston, a cocker spaniel/poodle cross.
One day Alistair struck up a conversation with Gloria Guiling, who lives around the corner on Folsom Street, and mentioned the vandalism. She told him that she’d been through a similar cycle when her family moved to the Mission in the early 1960s. Then the targets were Latino newcomers.
“Gloria said she had seen it happen many times but pays no attention now as the change is inevitable and the aggressors are few in number and limited in support,” he said.